A Popular Personage at Home

“I live here: ‘Wessex’ is my name.
I am a dog known rather well.
I guard the house; but how that came
To be my whim I cannot tell.

With a leap and a heart elate I go
At the end of an hour’s expectancy
To take a walk of a mile or so
With the folk I let live here with me.

Along the path, amid the grass
I sniff, and find out rarest smells
For rolling over as I pass
The open fields towards the dells.

No doubt I shall always cross this sill,
And turn the corner, and stand steady,
Gazing back for my mistress till
She reaches where I have run already,

And that this meadow with its brook,
And bulrush, even as it appears
As I plunge by with hasty look,
Will stay the same a thousand years.”

Thus “Wessex.” But a dubious ray
At times informs his steadfast eye,
Just for a trice, as though to say,
“Yet, will this pass, and pass shall I?”